How To Successfully Pitch Your Startup to Venture Capitalist

PREPARED BY:Nataliya OrlovskaMarketing Manager

15 Sep 2016

What is a Venture Capital?

It's a high risk investment capital, which a group of individuals represented by a VC firm is ready to spare for your project in exchange for an equity share. Usually, VC companies have one or more investment portfolios, which are owned by a limited partnership.

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How Do Venture Capital Firms Raise Money

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Pension Funds Endowments Family

OfficesInsurance

CompaniesLarge

CorporationsCharitable

Foundations

- OR - IndirectDirect

Advisory(Discretionary)

Fund of Funds

Advisory(Non-Discretio

nary)

VC Firm BVC Firm A

VC Firm C

Fund I Fund II Fund III

Startups A,B,C ...

Startups J,K L...

Startups R,S,T ...

Inve

stm

ents Returns

What Do VCs Look For in The Founder?

Imagination: Your product may not offer the faster solution, but it should offer a surprising one – think about Airbnb as an example.

Determination: If your passion and idea can’t fuel your drive for miles and you don’t have the persistence to keep pushing it no matter what, the founder career might not be your best choice.

Flexibility: Yes, you should be determined to run forward, yet that means you may also need to take a few sidewalks in the process.

Friendship: Founder’s friendship will be put to test multiple times, so these should be the people, who genuinely like one another and can bond over the common cause no matter what.

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How to Pitch Your Startup to Venture Capitalists: Key Ws to Know

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What’s Your Big Market To Disrupt?

What were their woes and how they liked your idea of safe scissors for

elderly lefties?

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For instance, how you've discovered that there are 25,000 senior lefties in your area.

What did they say while using your product?

Why Now is The Best Time To Launch?

Even if your product idea is fantastic, it may still fail if the market isn’t yet ready for it. Back your arguments with data – speak of your idea validation and the target audience research you did.

Make it crystal clear that now is the best time to seize the day and invest into your idea. Instill that FOMO feeling into the listeners - if they don’t follow up now, someone else will and reap the rewards.

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Why Your Idea Matters?

This “why” slide is the key element of a killer venture capital pitch. It should sum up why your idea matters both to the world and to you personally. Without seeing what’s fueling you, a lot of VCs may feel reluctant about investing in your project.

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What Are The Risks?

If you don’t clearly state the risks and possible bottlenecks you already envision, the VCs will draw the lines themselves, and not necessarily in the favor of your project.

While being innovative and having imagination is important, tossing your pink glasses aside and giving out some hard-boiled reality checks is equally important.

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Killing pitch deck structure

The ordering for DocSend and Sequoia differs only in few places:

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Few more creative and actionable tips

Don’t Pitch on Mondays

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If you are scheduled for later in the day, you are likely to spend the rest of the week wondering on their decision. Additionally, your pitch may get blurred in the heaps of other ideas delivered that week.So, if that’s an option – choose to pitch on Thursdays or Fridays.

Draw The Lines For The VCs

The phrase “We are the Uber for [insert market]” has become really popular among the entrepreneurs.The good reason for this is that it quickly draws the pattern for the VCs to understand what’s it in it for them and how much of success they can expect.

Don’t Pitch on Mondays

Additionally, show them what it will take to get to the $50M-$100M revenue benchmark in terms of customer, products, prices etc. Yes, it might be hard to draw this numbers at an early stage, yet draw a rough estimate.

That’s all!

Now you have it – the key tips for your startup’s amazing pitch!